Monday, May 7, 2012

Livestockholm Syndrome

From Wikipedia's article:

In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

Citizens of many countries suffer from Livestockholm Syndrome — a paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which citizens express empathy and have positive feelings towards the governments that have enslaved them, sometimes to the point of defending them.

These feelings are generally considered irrational by libertarians in light of the danger, risk, abuse of rights, and financial damage endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of a greater abuse from their captors for an act of kindness and excuse the abuse by arguing that their captors do some good things and that without their captors, such good things would be impossible (despite contemporary and historic evidence).

Interestingly, the victims of the governments are not oblivious to the damage they incur from their captors. But they always manage to attribute the damage to other factors (e.g., too much free market — in the cases when the damage was done by too much regulation or central management), oftentimes calling for more involvement of the government, one way or another.

The syndrome is a particularly dangerous meme in that it is very contagious and self-reinforcing. Seeing other victims' livestock-like behavior reinforces a citizen's conviction that without the kind shepherd, the herd would not survive.